Looking on the bright(er) side

A couple of weeks back, I wondered out loud whether we really have the right impression about how the black American population is doing economically. 

Well, here's an article in the New York Times that shows that, at least, the black upper middle class is acting doing better and better.   And the education trends aren't looking bad, too:

The most important trend driving African-American gains at the top can be found in the data on higher education. Between 1980 and 2016, the percentage of African Americans over the age of 25 who had completed a four-year college education tripled from 7.9 percent to 23.9 percent.

Top-flight colleges and universities have played a crucial role in the growth of a black upper middle class.

According to a January 2016 report in the Journal of Blacks In Higher Education, eight highly selective universities (Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Emory, Vanderbilt, Duke and the University of Pennsylvania) and five highly selective colleges (Amherst, Pomona, Barnard, Wesleyan and Williams) had freshmen classes with 10 percent or more African-Americans in them. Many of these selective schools had notably high black graduation rates, ranging from 83 to 96 percent.